


Spiel ohne Grenzen

by guineapiggie



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cold War, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Cold War, East Germany, F/M, Gen, as well as the city of Dresden - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2020-03-07 20:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18880642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guineapiggie/pseuds/guineapiggie
Summary: January 1989. Javier Suarez is a student from Cuba, come to finish his studies at TU Dresden. Jyn Erso is a fellow student, devoted socialist and daughter of a disgraced scientist who escaped across the border. The general secretary says the GDR needs no reforms, and the Wall will still stand in a hundred years.But things are not as they seem, because the state is practically bankrupt, and despite all efforts to scare them off, more citizens attempt to leave for the West every year. There is no love lost between Jyn Erso and the state's teachings, and her father never set foot on capitalist soil. Javier Suarez's real name is Cassian Andor, and he's not so much a computer science student from Havana as he is an undercover agent of the CIA, looking for her father.





	1. Klassenfeind - Enemy of the People

**Author's Note:**

> Like I said, as much as I want this to be my main WIP, it honestly really isn't and this is all I have for now.  
> My historical sources are all in German or from memory, but when I have more time I might add some English stuff if I can find something.  
> [I made a moodboard for this some time ago, come have a look!](https://ruby-red-inky-blue.tumblr.com/post/182901962342/spiel-ohne-grenzen-an-east-germany-spy-au-she)

> _Der Mensch ist leider nicht naiv  
>  Der Mensch ist leider primitiv_
> 
> _Freiheit, Freiheit  
>  Wurde wieder abbestellt*  
>  _
> 
> _-_ “Freiheit” by Marius Müller Westernhagen, West Germany 1987

 

* * *

_**Article 13** (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. - _ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948

* * *

_(14 December 1988: New travel and exit act in the GDR does not contain a general right to travel. “Flight from the Republic”, crossing into the capitalist West without express permission from the state, is a highly punishable offense.)_

* * *

 

The tape deck on the table started up with an unnerving whirr, and Jyn’s eyes flickered to it, despite herself. You’d think she was used to it all, really, by now – the microphone mounted on the table in front of her, the whirring of the tape, the noise of the cars starting outside the building, loud through the draughty windows. The grim-faced official opposite, tapping on the table, staring her down, and the one leaning at the wall behind her that she was told to pay no mind to. Their whole routine of sober-faced “is your name Gina Lyra Erso, are you a citizen of the German Democratic Republic”, the immediate, almost friendly reminder that “the microphone cannot see you nod, Miss Erso”.

She wasn’t used to it.

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I am citizen of the German Democratic Republic.” What else would she be, really? If she wasn’t, did they really believe she might _choose_ to sit on this goddamn chair, hands underneath her thighs, the whirring drilling into her brain? That she would choose to sit in rooms like this over and over, small window half-barred by a dark curtain and a bright lamp overhead that made that horrible high-pitched noise, enduring some aggressively nondescript official’s prying into random details of her private life?

The watery blue eyes of the man opposite remained impassive. “Miss Erso, what is your connection to Bernhard Ruck?”

She blinked. _Bodhi?_ This was about _Bodhi?_

“Um –“

“I’m sorry, is this a difficult question?”

_Put yourself together, Erso, damn it, you’ve been in chairs like this half your life. They’re just trying to throw you off the rails._

“No, it… it isn’t. Bodhi and I went to school together.”

“But you have both graduated from the EOS two years ago, have you not?”

“Yes.”

The man turned a page in his file. “And where is Mr Ruck right now?”

“He is with the NPA. He volunteered for three years of army duty.”

“When did you last see him?” The man’s bored tone had turned vaguely aggressive.

“He – he was on leave for Christmas, he left on Sunday –“

“So the last time you saw him was when, exactly?”

“I – I don’t…  Sunday morning, I saw him off at the station –“

He slammed his file shut. “Miss Erso, were you aware of Mr Ruck’s intention to desert from his post and the republic?”

Jyn felt herself frown, dumbstruck – Bodhi, deserter from the National People’s Army?

Bodhi, _deserter from the republic_?

Was this some kind of joke?

“What?”

“Were you aware of Mr Ruck’s plans to desert his post in order to illegally cross the border to the Federal Republic of Germany?”

“Bodhi would – he would _never –“_ She stammered, but then she caught herself, and shut her mouth.

_Would never what, Erso? Bodhi would never betray our glorious republic? Never turn his back on our socialist brothers and sisters?_

Right, who was she kidding.

 _Bodhi would never desert from his post?_ She’d have never thought him capable, that was for sure, she’d always thought Bodhi was afraid of the whole world, but what did she know, really –

_Bodhi would never leave me behind?_

_Well, Jyn, doesn’t that sound familiar._

She cleared her throat. “No. I was not aware of any intentions of his to desert. I don’t remember him voicing any negative thoughts about his posting or the state.”

“Not ever?”

“Not to my knowledge,” she replied, fighting to keep her voice firm.

So, there really was nothing new under the sun, then. Another one escaped towards a brighter future, leaving her in the dirt, in the span of two months.

The man’s demeanour changed again, his expression softened and he bent over the file towards her, his slightly oversized suit jacket crinkling.

“It’s alright, Miss Erso. I can see that you are willing to comply. Can you tell me your current occupation?”

This was something she had come to recognise, the constant one-eighties during the interview to tire her out. She recognised it now, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t working. Her head hurt.

“I’m a student of computer engineering.”

He nodded slowly, returning to her file. “Here in Dresden, at the Technical University, correct?”

“Yes.”

He threw her a thin smile. “And you understand, I presume, how lucky you are to have been granted this spot? Despite your late mother’s activities? And your father’s crime, no less?” His smile faded, though it looked less like intimidation tactics and more like he just wasn’t capable of keeping up the charade. “Do you see how much faith the state is putting in you? How much we have overlooked in order to grant you this chance?”

Jyn took a deep breath. Oh yes, the state had been so _gracious_ to grant her this university place. She hadn’t earned it, of course, by visiting a special Polytechnic Secondary School with advanced Russian lessons since third grade, or getting the second best A-level score of her year. She hadn’t earned it by fawning upon the party since she was thirteen, volunteering for literally any task she could, first for the Thälmann Pioneers, then for the FDJ. She hadn’t earned it by burying her nose in her books, earning better grades than she had before and doing everything she could think of to force them to give her a place despite her mother’s ‘crime’.

Her father’s old university buddy Krennic had put in a word for her more than once – and her father had had the gall to want her to be thankful for it - back when she had been trying to get into the EOS, then again when she’d applied for university. And she’d endured the creepy coffee sessions at his office to repay him for the favour, dressed up in the itchy bright blue FDJ blouse that he seemed to like just a little too much on her.

But none of this had earned her this place, of course. It was all by the good grace of the state, and she should be ever so _grateful_.

“I see that,” she said, just a smidge too quietly.

“And you understand, of course, that in return we expect your full cooperation in this matter, Miss Erso?”

“Yes.”

“So, on the 28th of December of this year, you were not aware of what Mr Ruck intended to do?”

“No. He was _fine_ when he came to visit, I didn’t – he was normal, completely normal,” she insisted, no need to fake the desperation in her voice. This was that day in 1976 all over again, her crying on a chair just like this one, asking over and over what had happened to her mother, why she couldn’t go home – and then, last October, when they called her in to tell her that her father had done just the same, just more successfully – and now Bodhi. Bodhi of all people.

“I didn’t know anything,” she insisted softly, glaring at the man opposite. “He never spoke about leaving.”

“How many years have you known Mr Ruck, Miss Erso?”

“Since I was eight,” she replied in a voice that turned out too harsh. Damn it. She’d sworn she wouldn’t let them get to her this time – “We were in the same home that I – that I went to when my mother died.”

“So you have known him for over twelve years then,” the officer said in a gentle, almost conversational tone.

“Yes.”

“And you say he never spoke of leaving?”

“ _Yes._ ”

He smiled at her again, nodding. “You must have a remarkable memory, Miss Erso, if you can be so sure of that after twelve years.” His face turned serious again. “Aiding and abetting a deserter is a serious crime. It would cost you more than your place at university.”

“I didn’t know!” she snapped, feeling her eyes sting with tears. “He never told me! I _didn’t_ know! I never thought he would _leave_!”

She had slipped up, badly; he’d got under her skin and she’d let him and she didn’t even care. It wasn’t _fair._ It wasn’t fair how everyone abandoned her, over and over, everyone she loved. Her mother, leaving her family behind just to get shot at the border; then the father they took her away from, finally disappearing from her life for good to do what his wife couldn’t; and now her best, her only friend, who’d been like a brother to her for so long –

They would have told her, of course, that it was for love that they hadn’t said anything, because the state would lock her up if they found out she’d known. But she wished she had known. She wished just one of them would have had the decency to give her a warning.

She wished just _one_ of them had loved her enough to tell her they were going, even if they didn’t love her enough to take her with them.

But no. She took a deep breath, then another, shifted to a straighter stance on the chair that seemed to consist of nothing but metal frame digging into her thighs and shoulder blades, and kept her head down, demurely, like she had for years.

Life wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t even _good_ this side of the Iron Curtain sometimes, and it was worse for Jyn Erso.

And then she was expected to smile and say _thank you_ for all that.

It wasn’t fair, but it was what it was, for her. She didn’t know what on earth had made her expect anything else.

 

* * *

_(19 January 1989: Erich Honecker proclaims the Wall will still exist in fifty and even a hundred years.)_

* * *

 

“Alright, Andor, come in. Take a seat.”

Cassian stepped into his boss’s office and closed the door behind himself, trying not to pull a face at the squeak of his left shoe. It was a new pair and it didn’t fit very well, he’d bought it on his way from the airport in a hurry. Draven had never approved of the army boots - he’d never said anything, of course, but Cassian always knew. They were unsubtle for a spy, he knew that too, but they were _comfortable._

This pair wasn’t. And it squeaked. So much for subtlety, then.

“Morning, sir.”

“Morning,” Draven gave back, distractedly, without looking up from the document in his hand. “How was your flight?”

“Fine. It’s good to be back.” They’d searched his suitcase, of course, because of the Mexican passport. Personally, he thought the suitcase might have tipped them off; if he _was_ a drug mule, he’d have bought himself a nicer one than the one he had.

His boss put down the file and looked up at him. “Sit, Andor. Have a look.” He shoved another manila folder over the desk, tapping the cover. “This one’s practically tailor-made for you.”

Cassian allowed himself a terse smile. Of course, that wasn’t quite right; it wasn’t so much that any case was tailor-made for him as he was tailor-made for a case. Operatives like him, picked young for a skillset or an accent or because they looked a part, then carefully trained and shaped for a specific purpose without ever being told what exactly that was, they were all tailor-made for _something._

He skimmed the first page, glanced at the pictures clipped to the inside of the folder. GDR, that wasn’t surprising, they’d made him take more German than Russian. A physicist, though, that was odd, he didn’t really know a lot about that – but no, the daughter studied computer science, that was something he could talk about.

“This might be a long assignment,” Draven said. “Could be up to a year.”

“That’s not an issue, sir.”

A look flickered over Draven’s face, just for a moment. Something like… no, not pity. Regret. Regret, perhaps, for the life that joining the agency had taken from Cassian, the one he might have had if he had never met Draven. Cassian wondered if he himself regretted that, too.

“So, the target is the daughter?”

Draven leaned back in his chair and grimaced. “In a way. We’re not sure if the father is still alive at all. The Stasi files say he left for the West, which is bullshit, because we went through fucking all of West Germany with a fine-tooth comb and he’s not there, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter. But they’re watching the girl, so either they have him and they’re keeping an eye on her because they need her to apply pressure, or he’s dead and they’re looking for something.”

Cassian frowned, went back to the file. “Or they’ve lost him and they’re waiting for him to contact her.”

“I’m not sure he’s the kind of guy who could slip away from the Russians. And the documents he got to us – uh, some of his work, and some… some stuff that he took from his colleagues apparently, and, Jesus… if there’s any chance the Russians have him, we have to assume they do. This guy worked with a bunch of people who helped build the hydrogen bomb, God knows what he could cook up for them.”

“So I’m really looking for the father?”

His boss nodded. “We have a few people in Russia looking for him, but yes. If there is anything to be found in Dresden, of either Erso or his work, then you need to find it.”

“How did he get you those documents?”

Draven sighed. “The girl’s best friend. He was in the National People’s Army, border patrol. Erso convinced the kid to take the papers across, that boy risked his life for them. Dealt the girl a huge blow, by the looks of it, both of them gone. Stasi breathing down her neck, too, so she’ll be skittish, she doesn’t seem to be the type to make friends easily anyway. But she doesn’t have anyone left, so that’s your in.”

Cassian nodded and glanced at the picture of the young woman. _Skittish_ wasn’t quite the word he would use. She looked quite short, slim, but not fragile. Closed-off, surely, but there was a defiance in her bright eyes, anger in the harsh pull around her lips.

It looked like something he’d felt before.

She wouldn’t _want_ a new friend, not really; and certainly no friend like him. But Cassian had been wrapping angry, out-of-place loners around his finger half his life, and he had no doubt he’d wear this one down eventually, too. He didn’t feel like that was a gift he should be particularly proud of, had never thought of it this way, but there was no denying it was useful.

“Your alias,” Draven went on briskly, “turn the page there. We’re putting you in her class.”

Cassian nodded, eyes flickering down the page. _Havana. Suarez Pérez, Javier_. “Do they get students from Cuba?”

“They get foreign students from communist countries, yeah. But not many. You’ll stand out. That cover _needs_ to hold.”

“It will.”

Draven looked up at him and sighed again. “It’ll be difficult, Andor. You’ll basically be on your own. There’s an English guy, an architect who’s helping with the restoration of some of the historic buildings. Works for MI6, been there some two or three months. He'll pick up your intel, and if you’re in trouble, he could get word out, but that’s about the extent of it. Otherwise, the next contacts are the embassies in Berlin and Prague, and getting to those will be a challenge.”

Cassian noted, without bitterness, the casual omission of their own agents – there were bound to be others, in Leipzig, in Chemnitz, spies in the big factories, in the political offices. But he was not surprised Draven chose not to mention them. Cassian was one amongst many, and giving him the reassurance of an ally on foreign territory was not worth these other assets. They were all just as important as the other, and all equally expendable. A fact of life, for him.

“I’ll make it work.”

The solemn look didn’t really vanish from Draven’s face. “I know you will. It’s why I’m giving this to you. This is just a warning.”

Cassian nodded. It didn’t _sound_ easy, of course, and had no idea if it sounded like something he wanted. He wasn’t even sure if it was his place to consider if he did. The fact of it was, it was what he had been waiting for. He’d spent his adult life – and some time before that, really – letting himself be moulded into a tool, and he wanted to be put to use. He wanted to feel like he was doing something. And if this was it, he would take it.

“I’ll make it work,” he repeated quietly, and his boss nodded.

“Good. Let’s give you the week with the file, make that cover work for you, and then we’ll set things in motion to get you to Cuba.”

Cassian frowned. “I’m nowhere near a Cuban accent, sir, I can’t really blend –“

“Just a day or so, so you can come in on a scheduled flight. Don’t focus on it, the chance of you meeting people from Cuba over there is very slim. Your Spanish isn’t going to be an issue.”

Cassian disagreed, but that was going to be his problem, not Draven’s. He got to his feet. “Alright. I’ll get to work on the file, then. Thank you, sir.”

His boss gave him a curt nod, ever the military man, but Cassian wasn’t bothered. It had always been like this between them, even when he was young. Draven was a man of few gestures and fewer words, and, eventually, Cassian had turned out just the same. He supposed that was just the way of their world, and anyway, it was probably better for a spy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation: Mankind is, sadly, not naive  
> Mankind is, sadly, primitive  
> Freedom, freedom,  
> has been cancelled once again


	2. Tal der Ahnungslosen - Valley of the Clueless

_(6 February 1989: 20 year-old Chris Gueffroy attempts to cross the Wall to West Berlin to avoid conscription to the National People’s Army. The exact number of deaths at the Berlin Wall is unknown; at least 140 are confirmed. Gueffroy, instantly killed by at least two shots in the back, is the last of them.)_

* * *

 

Two and a half minutes, according to her father’s watch, and only on days where the weather was passable enough not to spoil the feeling, of course.

That was Jyn’s freedom for the day.

The way from the run-down student residence on Reichenbach street to the university library was a short but strenuous bike ride, and every day she hated the trip with a fierce passion as she forced her old bike uphill, and it was mostly the thought of the way back that kept her going.

The experiments in class kept her occupied – she was good at what she did, very good, in fact, and she loved it. But she was still trapped, between those people with the party pins that had bought their university place, trapped between the walls of derelict old buildings, trapped underneath the watchful eyes of passers-by, of her professors, her roommates. Trapped underneath her parents’ little rebellions. Trapped, in the end, like everyone else, between barbed wire, thanks to having been born some one-hundred and seventy kilometres too far to the north-east.

But this, these two and a half minutes downhill on the old bike with the brakes that screeched ever since Bodhi wasn’t around anymore to oil them the way he used to – this was the one thing that would restore her sanity, her happiness, even. And unless they locked her up, nobody was going to take this from her, even if they seemed dead set on taking everything else. The day after they told her Bodhi had left, she pretended to have forgotten a book at the library. So she got a full five minutes that evening, to battle the emptiness.

That little bike ride was a taste of what she’d lost, or maybe never had. There was a sudden, bright flash of all the things she longed for, everything she wouldn’t admit under torture she missed, in the rush of the wind on her face, the way it tore at her clothes. You could go down Berg street and almost all of Gagarin street, nearly all the way to the train station through the rows of crumbling facades, without ever having to pedal. It was like flying.

For two and a half minutes.

It wasn’t her _only_ luxury, of course, it seemed people would never tire of telling her that, but it sure was the only one that _felt_ luxurious.

She supposed there was little point in wondering if she owed her continued student status to Krennic or her professors intervening on her behalf – she was a good student, and worked harder than anyone else in the class. She had to, and she was used to it; it was hard for children of academics to get into the EOS, let alone university. And for someone whose mother had applied for a permanent relocation to the West and then attempted to escape when she was predictably denied, it should have been impossible. Even if, like her, you were an outstandingly active FDJ member and the kind of party member that took private notes at a meeting. Her academic career was always balancing on the edge of a knife, and it really should have long since toppled – if not after her mother’s death, then after her father fled. And now that she knew a _third_ person who had left for the West… well, all her playing the good avid socialist and all her otherwise doubtlessly pristine Stasi files be damned, she imagined it must have cost Krennic quite some effort to allow her to stay at university, and she wasn’t keen on finding out what he might wind up asking in return.

Anyway, the new semester was due to start in just a few more days, and a crisp and bright January turned into February so quietly she had barely even noticed. It was eerie, how little had changed.

She hadn’t seen her father a lot even before – well, before everything. They’d taken her away from him after her mother left, of course, and even if neither of them had seemed very sorry about the lack of quality time in the last few years, she wasn’t about to thank them for it. Her father had _said_ he was sorry, obviously, but if he’d had enough sway to keep her in school, get her into the TU, then they would have let him see her too if he’d asked. Which he clearly hadn’t, and she could hardly blame him. What would they have talked about? Her mother? Hardly. His work? Her studies? The stupid FDJ projects, maybe? And anyway, now he was gone; probably sat in some beautiful library in a big gleaming city, with all the books he’d been trying and failing to get his hands on for years.

And his daughter was still here, still cycling up Berg Street on her squeaky, rust-stained bike, the houses around her still as grey as the sky above them, chips of plaster missing around the corners and the windowsills. She’d go up to the library to follow up on her lectures, and then she’d go back before it got too dark to see the deep cracks in the concrete. She couldn’t really afford crashing into some professor’s coveted Wartburg, or ruining her bike for that matter. If her roommates weren’t too loud, she might manage to read a bit more. That was, if Annett had finally got her hands on a new lightbulb. That wasn’t usually something they were short on, but the damn fixture was broken and burned through a bulb a month.

Nothing had changed, really. Except that, on the weekend, there would be no letter from Bodhi. And on none of the weekends after that.

People got mail from the West, sure; even from people who’d fled the republic. But not her. If Bodhi bothered to write to her, she would bet everything she owned – however little that amounted to – that those letters would go straight to a desk in the Ministry of State Security, and stay there for a while. And that didn’t really matter either because he probably wouldn’t write, anyway – it had usually been Bodhi who had kept her out of trouble when they were kids, and he wouldn’t risk her fragile comfort, not even to let her know _he_ was safe.

Jyn wondered if she should be grateful for that, too.

She was back just before the rest of her roommates, which was a rare but pleasant occurrence. The autonomy over the radio station didn’t mean much to her, it wasn’t like you could get an interesting station down in the valley anyways, but having the two small rooms that she shared with the other three girls to herself was nice.

Not being watched by anyone, for a little while, was nice.

Of course, it didn’t last very long. After a blissful thirty minutes that Jyn had had alone with her cup of tea, a key jostled in the lock, then Annett came in, dropped her bag and jacket by the door and tossed a small stack of letters onto the kitchen counter.

Jyn filed idly through the letters. There was the usual one for Kathrin, from her boyfriend who was doing a tour with the NVA, judging by the Cyrillic letters in the stamp currently somewhere abroad; the obligatory letter from Tanja’s mother, who clearly had too much time and paper on her hands.

None for her. It wasn’t _surprising,_ of course; but it stung all the same.

“No letter for you today?”

“No.”

Annett seemed to catch something in her tone and leaned over the small table with interest. “You guys have a fight or something?”

“What?”

“Your boy, who keeps writing to you. Bernhard, right?”

Jyn wondered why her _leave-me-alone_ face suddenly didn’t seem to work anymore.

“He writes you every week.”

“So?”

Annett shrugged, impervious to her cold tone, then got out a rumpled pack of cigarettes and opened the little window with some effort. “So he didn’t this week. Did you fight?”

“No.” Jyn sighed, watched Annett fiddle with her lighter and wondered how much of a chance there was Annett would let this go. Slim to none, sadly. “And he’s not… we were friends. At least I thought that.”

“But?”

Jyn shrugged and got to her feet. She didn’t _mind_ Annett. She might have even liked her; more than the other two girls anyway. And she certainly didn’t strike her as a likely Stasi informant, Annett with her posters from New York and her record collection and her jeans and her parade of useless boyfriends. But then, wasn’t that the point of a spy? Bottom line was, you couldn’t be too careful.

You also couldn’t look like you were holding anything back _,_ though.

“He made for the West,” Jyn said flatly, decided on her strategy.

“What?”

“Yeah. He was border patrol. Cut and ran, they said.” She shook her head and gathered her books. “Wouldn’t want letters from someone like that anyway.”

Annett eyed her, looking doubtful. “Right,” she replied quietly and let some embers rain down onto the pavement, then added in a would-be conversational tone: “I got coffee. Nine damn mark the quarter pound, can you believe that?”

Sure she could. And she bet it would still taste even worse than the coffee they had used up a few weeks ago. They said in the West, you could get coffee at half the price, and it tasted nothing like whatever old beans and burned wood chips they were selling them here.

But she didn’t repeat any of that aloud. Speaking her mind, like coffee, was a rare commodity, to be indulged in only rarely, if at all. Instead, she dutifully replied, though without real conviction: “Well, imagine we would have to pay half our wage for actual food like in the West.”

Annett threw her a pointed look, and Jyn could tell there was something at the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t say any more.

Because Jyn sure looked like the kind of person who would tell on her roommate, with her FDJ meetings and her coffees with a high party functionary and the alibi books on her empty shelves.

For the fraction of a second, she wanted not to be all of that, then she clutched her books tighter and got to her feet.

She wasn’t a bad roommate; she was quiet and tidy and she did her chores and bought groceries, and never brought visitors. She couldn’t afford to be a person her roommates _liked,_ and most days, she didn’t let that bother her.

Annett had switched on the radio in the kitchen and Bruce Springsteen wafted through the flat, capitalist music, but regime-approved. Jyn dropped on her bed and let her eyes fall shut for a moment, idly listening to Annett fumbling with the English lyrics.

Bodhi loved Springsteen. He used to talk about the Grand Canyon, driving down Route 66 in one of those big American cars.

Maybe she should have seen it coming.

Maybe she should have known.

>  

> _You sit around getting older_   
>  _There's a joke here somewhere and it's on me_
> 
> _Stay on the streets of this town_   
>  _And they'll be carving you up alright_   
>  _They say you gotta stay hungry_   
>  _Hey baby I'm just about starving tonight_

 

* * *

 

Cassian yanked open the zipper of the battered suitcase with gritted teeth, praying it wouldn’t break.

“Couldn’t have given me slightly higher quality?” he asked drily, and Antilles grinned.

“Yeah, we could have, but I figured you’d stand out with the Louis Vuitton, you know.” He turned back to the shelf behind him and dropped a heavy coat and a pair of shoes on the desk. “Besides, if the zipper breaks at the airport, it’ll save them the trouble of searching it covertly.”

Cassian threw him a pointed glance and looked through the suitcase. A spare pair of shoes, two pairs of trousers, one linen, one a hideous corduroy; two cheap shirts, an equally cheap suit jacket and tie; two pullovers, a t-shirt and a pair of thin nylon track pants, two sets of mismatched pyjamas, underwear, some toiletry; hat, scarf and gloves; all in various shades of grey, faded reds and blues or drab brown.

“I’ve got books here, come have a look.” Antilles heaved a box from the lower rack of the shelf, then went back for a battered dark leather satchel and two battered paperbacks. “I got you your textbooks, but I didn’t really know what kind of novel you were angling for, so…”

Cassian inspected the two textbooks for a moment, then turned his attention to the books in the cardboard box. They all looked slightly worse for wear, printed on thin, yellowing pages. He knew their paper tended to look much older than it was in a very short span of time, but still, the Melville in his hands looked positively _ancient_. He put it back and picked up one from a German author instead.

“What’s this one?”

Antilles glanced at the book Cassian had indicated. “I wasn’t sure about that one. It’s pretty political, but not necessarily pro Communism. The Nazis burned it, though, so I guess they wouldn’t want to ban it or anything. The author was born in Dresden, very vocal against the world wars, so I figured it might look like you were making an effort to educate yourself.”

Cassian nodded. “Political is good. I might have to stick my nose into things, so we should back that trait up.”

“Well, if you want political –“ Antilles reached into the back of the box and grabbed two more books.

“Here, they have kids read this in high school. It’s fucking depressing, set in a concentration camp, I guess that’ll do –,“ he handed him a book with an ugly black-and-white cover, _“_ and some essential reading, maybe?” Antilles held out another book, small and faded red.

Cassian eyed it for a moment, then shook his head and reached for the novel. “Students would know what’s in there already. Besides, I guess they’ll have the Communist Manifesto at the library, right?”

“Yeah, but a good communist packs his own treasured copy.”

“This communist can’t afford a big enough suitcase for it,” Cassian replied drily. “Besides, I’m going to _Europe_ , how much books would I really bring? They have stuff available in the GDR that isn’t even legal in Cuba.”

Antilles grinned and returned the other books back to the box. “That’s why you’re not getting more clothes. Seems a good excuse for you to buy stuff that blends better.” He stared pensively at the open suitcase for a moment. “See if you can beat the stuff up a bit, though, the clothes look like they fell off the back of a truck. Best we could do. Take some light sandpaper to the pants, scuff the leather –“

“With a brick. Grease and petrol on the shirts. I’ve done this before, Wedge.”

Antilles threw him an apologetic grin. “Yeah, just… don’t run the jumpers through the wash too much, they won’t survive it. Soak them and hang them up to dry, they should lose what shape they had pretty quickly.”

“And don’t wash the shirts with red?” Cassian asked drily and Wedge smirked.

“Please don't. There’s some pencils and stuff in the bag, and I got you a bunch pictures of lecture notes from Havana you can copy down. And uh, valuables –” Wedge reached into a drawer and pulled out a wallet and a golden wristwatch. “It looks weirdly empty, I double-checked like five times if that’s really all you’d have,” he said, his easy smile back on his lips, and nodded towards the wallet.

It was black, very small and oddly light, and contained no more than a passport, a driver’s license and a handful of Cuban Peso notes and some coins.

Cassian wasn’t used to riches, and wasn’t prone to collecting customer cards, but this felt odd even to him.

“You sure that’s all you want? I guess I could get you –“

He shook his head, still inspecting the contents of the wallet. “No. The less, the better. This will do.”

“Alright, if you say so.” Antilles sat down on the edge of the desk with a sigh. “Hey, Dameron should still be over there, right?”

“Over where?”

“Germany.”

Cassian glanced up from the fifty-peso note in his hand. “On a mission?”

“No, at the – at the embassy in West Berlin. Remember he married that girl from Foreign Affairs, what was her name? Anyway, they went to work there about half a year back, so I guess he’s not back yet.”

East would have been better, Cassian thought idly, and it probably wouldn’t come in handy anyway. A part of him was annoyed that Antilles had even told him. He would have liked to see Kes, but obviously that was not about to happen; contact to the US embassy would be inexcusably idiotic. There was no letting him know he was coming, either, even just to keep an eye out for him, but still, it might be a slight advantage in an emergency. Dameron still owed him, he might pull an old acquaintance out of something other embassy employees would not risk – though really, Kes would probably do that for anyone. That kid was too soft for this job, or at least he had been back in their training days. Which was years ago now, so who knew. Time had turned Cassian cynical, after all, why not Dameron, too?

“Her name’s Shara,” he replied quietly, then tucked the books and the wallet into the satchel.

“Right, yeah.” Antilles nodded, his smile slipping into nostalgia just a smidge, then he caught himself. Cassian wondered if he had allowed himself the slip-up, or if this kind of thing was the reason why he was behind the desk and Cassian was the one receiving the fake socialist suitcase.

He slowly pulled the old zipper shut, slung the satchel over his shoulder and gathered the coat and shoes in his arms.

“When are you leaving?”

Cassian raised a brow. “You realise I’m not supposed to tell you.”

Antilles rolled his eyes. “Hope you replace that stick up your ass on the regular, Andor.” He grinned and gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Gimme that suitcase, I’ll walk you to your car.”

“I don’t have a car, Wedge. You don’t want to walk me back to the hotel, do you?”

Antilles sighed. “You used to be more of a people person, you know that?”

Cassian scoffed. That was… probably true. He could still be nice, and sociable, and charming, when he made an effort, but between missions, all that had long since started to feel like a dangerous waste of energy.

“What?”

Cassian threw Antilles a wry smile and took the suitcase back from him. “Nothing.”

_Oh Wedge. Go back to your buddies and your races and your boyfriends, and count your blessings that I’m not a people person, because if I was, I would be long dead. And when I die, it will be you trapped in some dreary foreign country with nobody to trust in the whole damn world, and it will eat you alive._

“Take care, Antilles.”

 

The meeting had left him in a strange mood, and instead of going back to the hotel he wound up just wandering aimlessly through the streets of DC. In the back of his mind, he was wondering what would happen if he was stopped by police right now, with this suitcase and the Cuban passport with the GDR visa in it. As a concept, the thought was vaguely amusing.

He wondered if he would miss it; the big streets with the shiny cars and the big storefronts and pop music blaring from every entrance, and the food stands and coffee shops and newspaper stands…

There was a big poster being hoisted up the façade of a cinema on the corner. He would miss the new Indiana Jones, by the looks of it.

He didn’t feel all that attached to the States, never had. He believed in what they were doing, for the most part – but it wasn’t about America, about stars and stripes and capitalism. He just didn’t agree with entire countries being held prisoner by their own governments. Besides, if the Russians were to blow up the US, Mexico would not be far behind, and that…

He hadn’t been home in so long, but still, when he closed his eyes and imagined the worst that could happen, it wasn’t DC or New York he saw melt away.

 

A few hours later, he sat at the desk of his hotel room and copied the lecture notes Antilles had given to him into a notebook with paper so thin he felt like he should copy the bible on it instead. His meagre but very American dinner of black coffee and a bland hamburger was growing cold in greasy wrappings. Cold air filtered in through the open window; it was unpleasant, but he liked the background noise of the traffic. Behind the tall glittering buildings outside, the sun was setting amid dirty yellow clouds striped with magenta; and down on the street, the stream of pedestrians and cars showed no sign of ceasing. He picked one at random, a middle-aged man in a plasticky-looking black jacket, and followed him with his eyes until he’d disappeared around the corner.

Where was he headed? Going by the time of day, and the briefcase in his hand and the way his feet dragged ever so slightly, probably home, either exhausted from a long day of work or not looking forward to what awaited him where he was going all that much. Cassian could relate.

With a sigh, he reached for the fake passport in his own bag and stared at the young man in the faded sepia picture.

This time tomorrow, Javier Suarez Pérez would be in Havana, and on a plane to Germany before the end of the week.

 

> _You can't start a fire_   
>  _You can't start a fire without a spark_   
>  _This gun's for hire_   
>  _Even if we're just dancing in the dark_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I looked up Bruce Springsteen songs because I'm me and decided I had to _know_ what song is playing, then decided to actually use the song, not sure if it works. It's "Dancing in the Dark"
> 
> The title refers to a kind of derogatory nickname people in the GDR had for the Elbe valley and Dresden in particular - because for the longest time, it was the only place in the GDR where you couldn't get any West German radio due to the geography, so they tended to learn things much later than other people. Here's [the wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tal_der_Ahnungslosen)


	3. Kubaorangen - Cuban Oranges

_(10 February 1989: The Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party discusses the possibility of implementing a multi-party system in the Hungarian People's Republic.)_

* * *

 

Jyn threw the fist-sized green baubles in their wooden box a dark look. A whole big crate of _oranges,_ in the _Konsum,_ just _there_ on the lowest shelf. And somehow, even a handful of them left.

The wonders truly never ceased.

Still, she wouldn’t be tricked into spending money on those things again. The ones they’d bought around the fourth advent had practically sprayed sawdust when she’d cut them open, and had contained so many seeds she could have probably planted an entire forest with them.

She remembered one Christmas Eve – a bad one, her parents had been fighting over something Jyn hadn’t really understood at the time, and everyone had been on edge for the better part of the day – her father had almost cried looking at the orange his mother had laid out on the table.

Jyn couldn’t say she loved the taste of what little juice the damn things yielded, but it wasn’t something she got upset about, either. After all, unlike her parents, she had never seen a “real” orange in her life, though it wasn’t hard to imagine they’d be better than the ones they did have in store sometimes. If you got very lucky. And if you beat the rest of the city to it.

Kathrin had brought ten jars of pickled pumpkin from home. With another contemptuous glare towards the oranges, Jyn decided she would contend with pretend exotic fruit like the rest of the country.

The spot where the store placed toothbrushes when it had them was covered in a thin film of dust. Jyn sighed. Three weeks now. Wonderful.

Maybe on her way from work she could swing by a bakery, get a piece of cake to go with their godawful coffee. It wasn’t like she had anything to save up her meagre salary for…

(She had saved it up, always, hoarded what little pocket money her mother used to slip her, then anything that remained of her own money at the end of the month… until her father left. It was just too risky to save up, it was a _carte blanche_ for the Stasi to arrest her, say she was planning to make across the border, too. And now that Bodhi had left, too… well, she’d better not sit on those fifty-eight marks in her pocket for another month.)

No, she would go to work, and then she would try to spend her money as soon as possible, and then she’d ride her bike back through this grey city to her grey bunk bed in the corner of that grey little room, and then to the grey lecture hall the next morning.

And some day, she would work in some factory and move into a grey little flat with some grey little man, probably a fellow student, and they would have a few children in washed-out shirts with little red kerchiefs and little blue hats, and they’d sing her the songs they’d learned with the Thälmann pioneers.

Like the ideal, picture-perfect socialist she had turned herself into.

She supposed she might name one of the kids Erich, if it were a boy. Naming him after Lenin would be overdoing it.

She grabbed a jar of pickles, leaving one last jar on the shelf, and placed it into her basket with too much force.

_Think cake, Jyn._

 

> _We walked in the cold air_  
>  _Freezing breath on a window pane_  
>  _Lying and waiting_  
>  _A man in the dark in a picture frame_  
>  _So mystic and soulful_  
>  _A voice reaching out in a piercing cry_  
>  _It stays with you until_  
>    
>  _The feeling has gone, only you and I_  
>  _It means nothing to me_  
>  _This means nothing to me_

* * *

 

The plane engine was still roaring in his ears, just below the rattling of the train on the tracks. Probably just jet lag – this was the farthest east he’d ever gone in his life. Cassian had never been this side of the Iron Curtain, and Javier had never crossed the Atlantic at all, of course.

Havana had been fleeting, somehow, like a strange, half-remembered dream. But he had tried his best to get a look around, memorise what he could. Details, colours, the sunlight filtering through dirty windows. One afternoon, he had hung around a crumbling backyard, watching children playing, kicking at the cigarette stubs and old newspapers in the dirt, and tried to imagine this was his childhood. Tried to imagine scraping his knees and the heels of his hands on the concrete slabs playing football, maybe sneaking out to kiss some girl in the shadowy passage to the street late in the evening.

It wasn’t so different from Cassian’s life, he imagined. More dilapidated, of course, and all those slogans high up on the walls in the city… but the warm concrete felt the same, those bright days with the sun-bleached colours, and holding a girl’s hand for the first time wouldn’t be any different, either. Neither would a kiss, really. He remembered Cassian’s first kiss, not too clearly – God, that was _so_ long ago – but the girl’s lips had tasted of cigarettes, and her hair had been very soft between his fingers.

Cuban cigarettes though, they were disgusting. He suspected they stuffed them with was left when they mowed public lawns.

From what he’d heard, GDR cigarettes weren’t going to be a huge improvement.

Cassian sighed and fixed his eyes on the landscape outside the window. Germany was almost as colourless as the pictures he’d seen, but in a way, it was pretty, or at least he could see why someone might think so. Rolling hills, fields as far as the eye could see, and patches of forests, naked tree trunks blackened from the rain. The sky was a uniform grey, with some wisps of darker clouds that were nearly purple. More rain, presumably. Little villages nestled into the shallow valleys and along the bend of small rivers, low-rise houses in a particular brown-grey plastering, black slated roofs, and somewhere, a picturesque little church jutting out. It looked… sad, somehow, but there was a charm to it, a nostalgia. There was a taste of history, just not necessarily a happy one.

The factories ruined the vista, especially the coal plants. They had a skeletal look about them against the gloomy sky.

The rattling was very loud, louder than trains back in the States, anyway. He wasn’t really surprised, the train seemed _ancient_ ; the entire thing seemed to be cast-iron, almost like it was made in one piece, and the switchboards where marked up in four different languages like they’d been there since the occupation.

He almost wished he’d asked the conductor when they’d be arriving in Dresden, even though the man had been staring at him like he’d sprouted antennas or something. He supposed he was in for quite a bit of that – most of these people had never seen someone from America in their lives, except on television. He _did_ mysteriously have this entire compartment to himself.

He didn’t suppose he would get there before nightfall. A pity, he didn’t like arriving in a new place at night. He liked to get a good look right away, get his bearings. Places looked different in the dark. He had to map them at night, too, of course, but he didn’t like doing that one first. Habits. The shrinks and the instructors at the academy said it was normal to cling to routines under pressure, but even though he couldn’t help doing it, he thought it was dangerous. It was probably good that he was breaking the pattern.

Either way, he’d have to get a good look at everything before he tried to get near the girl. Most of that he could pass off as curiosity, just a boy from Havana who’d got a chance to go to Europe, but still, he’d have to pace himself or people would get suspicious. It’d be at least a week before he could get a look at her, maybe more.

He’d shredded her picture along with the rest of her file back in DC, of course, and committing it to memory had been an obligation, a part of the job. But when he closed his eyes to recall it now, with the train rattling in his ears and the cold draft from the windows and that strange, grey-ish landscape rolling by the window… he felt that sting of sympathy – comradery, maybe – stronger than before. He didn’t really know why. Nothing in their personal history aligned, he had no more than a passing interest into computer sciences, although he had an eye for it, nor was he particularly enthusiastic about socialism for that matter.

Although he suspected that in her heart, Jyn Erso wasn’t, either.

Still. The last mission like this, when he’d had to get close to an asset undercover, had been a long while ago. He couldn’t remember if he’d thought of Rodrigo like this before he met him, with a touch of… what, affection? He made a point of thinking about assets by first name, he felt like that was something they had taught him at the academy, to establish some kind of personal rapport.

But that wasn’t true, was it?

He did remember. He hadn’t thought of the asset this way. And he shouldn’t now.

He leaned his head back and tried to focus on the rhythmic rattling of the tracks, of the windowpane that was lose in the frame. He hadn’t had a lot of time to decompose after his last assignment. It was an adjustment period. That was all.

“ _Nächste Haltestelle: Radebeul_ ,” it clanged from the speakers, and Cassian cursed under his breath - in Spanish, not English, obviously. He still remembered how hard it had been to drop that habit when he was a kid (he'd quickly found it unsettled most Americans), and now here he was, unlearning it all. Well, not really - it wasn't really _Cassian_ cursing, after all. The announcement went on, but he barely caught a word of what was said. They had prepared him for the language, but they hadn’t prepared him for the goddamn dialect. Understanding these people was going to take him  _months._

  

> _The music is weaving_  
>  _Haunting notes, pizzicato strings_  
>  _The rhythm is calling_  
>  _Alone in the night as the daylight brings_  
>  _A cool, empty silence_  
>  _The warmth of your hand and a cold grey sky_  
>  _It fades to the distance_  
>    
>  _The image has gone, only you and I_  
>  _It means nothing to me_  
>  _This means nothing to me_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Vienna by Ultravox
> 
> Cuban oranges were sometimes available and because they had so many seeds they were advertised as juicing oranges (and they were famously inedible any other way apparently). I've never met anyone who didn't hate them, but these oranges and limes (which were supposed to replace lemons but much to the party's chagrin people still vastly preferred lemons) were mostly all that was available for the general public - and even that in highly irregular intervals.  
> pickled pumpkin: sweet-and-sour pupkin was nicknamed "worker's pineapple" (the taste is actually kinda-sorta similar, and since pumpkin grows pretty well in Germany, it was available to most people with a garden, while you had to be very lucky to get canned pineapple in one of the rare delicatessen stores that sold western products)  
> On the cigarettes: my father refers to GDR and Soviet cigarettes as "Bahndamm, dritte Schur", meaning roughly: the clippings you'd get if you mowed the grass and weed around train tracks three times over. I don't smoke but that sounds pretty disgusting to me ^^  
> on the dialect: as far as I know, learners of German in the US are not made aware of this a lot - or cover the Bavarian dialect exclusively idk - but Germany has a lot of very old and distinct regional dialects, often partially influenced by very old, sometimes dead minority languages (think British Isles). The Saxonian dialect is one of the least popular in Germany today, and it gives foreigners a lot of grief. add to that the very odd and distinctive socialist party lingo that was used by officials in the GDR and Cassian is in for a real challenge


	4. IMs - Unofficial Collaborators

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lyrics from "The Carpet Crawlers" by Genesis, look it up, it sets a mood ^^

_(12 October 1988: Erich Honecker hands over the keys to „the three millionth flat constructed in the GDR since 1971“. The actual count of new flats is below two million.)_

* * *

“Another?” the bartender asked, nodding towards his empty glass, but he shook his head. It didn’t take much to get him drunk, and if he overslept and missed his train, he’d be well and truly screwed.

Besides, he wanted a last look at this place before they sent him out to the middle of nowhere for another three months. He missed Dresden something awful, faded and crumbling though it was. He missed the way things had been when they were kids; him and Jyn chasing each other through the park on Saturday evenings, huddled over a book somewhere, even the two of them with soil and dirt under their fingernails, digging for potatoes out on the fields during the summer holidays. He even missed school, sometimes – Jyn rolling her eyes at him across the schoolyard at the flag ceremony, hissing the solutions up at him when their Russian teacher called on him in class. _Declinate_ _лампа,_ he thought wistfully and rubbed his cold hands. His breath fogged in the cold October air. The city had looked different to him then, grander somehow, and the cracks not nearly so visible.

“лампа, лампы… лампе,” he muttered, wracking his brain for the next. This was taking him back – this was as far as he’d ever got. Jyn had teased him endlessly when they were kids. _“She asks you the same damn word every week. One would think that you’d learn it eventually.”_

He passed the heap of ruins that had been their most famous church, long before his time, and made his way up to the terraces. It wasn’t very late yet, but there weren’t a lot of people about, which was just how he liked it, a welcome breather from the hustle and bustle of the casern.

He stopped at the edge of the terrace, leaned on the railing and stared out at the black river shimmering in the dark. He didn’t want to go back. That was why he’d told Jyn he had somewhere to be on his last evening – he didn’t want her to see. Maybe she knew, anyway, but he liked to pretend that she didn’t.

He didn’t want to go back, but what else was there? At least this way, one day he might get to fly a plane like he’d always dreamed. The rest – guard duty and all – well, that was just the price he was expected to pay for it.

A few pedestrians passed him by, pulling him out of his thoughts, and he gripped the railing a little tighter to ground himself. The cold metal was wet with rain.

They’d come here together, he suddenly remembered, him and Jyn, with her father, on that strange evening when he’d taken them to the opera. How long ago was that now? Six years? Eight?

There’d been a new card taped to Jyn’s door, underneath the others. That was probably all she’d heard from her father this year.

Another trip to Russia, she’d said with a shrug, Leningrad. She’d looked a little bit jealous of that, actually – she’d always wanted to go, but in her words, they’d let her go as soon as he spoke perfect Russian. So, never.

 “лaмпа,” he resumed with an annoyed frown. “лампы… лампе…” Damn it. This couldn’t possibly be that hard. “лампе… лампой?”

“лампу, first,” someone said quietly, making him jump. Bodhi hadn’t heard anyone approach him. Some soldier he was.

The voice was vaguely familiar. “лампа, лампы, лампе, лампу, лампой, лампе.”

He glanced over at the man leaning against the balustrade next to him, fully prepared to… well, throw him a distinctly annoyed look and thank him and walk away, probably. Then he did a double take – maybe the voice had sounded familiar, but he had not expected…

“Professor – Professor Erso?”

The professor looked different from the last time he’d seen him, older and greyer, like the dust and the dirt had crept into the corners of him and he hadn’t bothered to rinse it off; but the broken little smile that glowed dully in his eyes was still the same.

“Galen, please.” He looked Bodhi up and down, buried his hands in his threadbare coat, his briefcase awkwardly tucked underneath his arm. Bodhi thought the coat looked too large for him. He thought overall that Erso had something malnourished about him, and that he looked gaunt and worn in the pale light of the streetlamps.

“God, you’ve grown, haven’t you?”

Bodhi shrugged awkwardly. “I thought… I thought you were in Russia.”

Erso’s eyes flickered to the steps behind them. “I was. I’m supposed to be, actually –“

“Are you here to see Jyn, then?” Bodhi asked stiffly, hoping to convey at least a little bit of reproach.

“I came to see you, actually,” the other man replied, still in that quiet, terse voice. “I, uh… I don’t have much time, but it’s… it’s very important.”

“Me?” Bodhi asked slowly, uncomfortable under Erso’s eyes that had taken on a desperate, manic kind of intensity. He fought the urge to take a step back – Erso didn’t look like a man to worry about, even for a sorry excuse of an army private like himself, but something in his eyes screamed danger. Even death.

“I… I don’t…”

“Bernhard –“

“Bodhi,” he corrected reflexively, and Erso gave a solemn nod as if Bodhi had entrusted him with a secret.

“Bodhi. You barely know me, and I know you have every reason not to trust me –“

Bodhi grimaced. It was true; he had a long, _long_ list of reasons to dislike Professor Erso, hate him, even, and a longer one of reasons not to trust him. Even before he ambushed him by the riverbank in the middle of the night looking like he was hopped up on drugs.

“But I _need…_ I need you to listen, Bodhi. I need… you need to listen very carefully to what I have to tell you, and you… you cannot tell anyone, Bodhi. You cannot tell anyone that you’ve seen me, and you _cannot_ tell _anyone_ what I’m about to tell you.”

“Uh, I –“

“Bodhi, please understand. If anyone finds out that we spoke, it… Bodhi, we are all at risk. Jyn, too. Jyn most of all.” Erso’s voice had dropped to a quiet, frantic whisper. He looked… Bodhi supposed it was the dim, cold light, but Erso looked like a character in an old spy movie, black-and-white and with that manic, panicked spark in his eyes.

He’d walked into a Hitchcock film, Bodhi thought wildly, and he didn’t like it one bit.

“Bodhi, tell me you understand.” Erso stepped closer, a hand heavy on Bodhi’s shoulder. “The boy I remember would have given everything for my daughter. Is that still true?”

He swallowed. “Of course, yeah,” he muttered, then squared his shoulders. “For her, anything.”

Erso’s smile was relief and regret, all at once.

 

 

> _The fleas cling to the golden fleece  
>  _ _Hoping they'll find peace  
>  Each thought and gesture are caught in celluloid  
>  There's no hiding in my memory  
>  There's no room to avoid –_

 

* * *

( _14 February 1989: The first of 24 Global Positioning System satellites is placed into orbit._ )

* * *

  
Cassian tucked the sheet into place, then for a moment stood absent-mindedly smoothing the fabric. Maybe he shouldn’t be doing that, it was so clearly a soldier’s habit… but no, Javier had served, too. He was glad for that – most of Cassian he could tuck away into some little corner of himself, but the soldier was hard to get rid of.

Still, he shouldn’t be too meticulous about it. His roommates were already snooping around him. He wondered which one of them had been set on him by the Stasi – maybe the quiet one. He’d introduced himself as Peter, but the other two called him ‘Red’, and Cassian had not yet figured out if that was for his red hair or for political convictions. Then again, he was maybe _too_ obvious…

Eckart, nicknamed ‘Eck’, who shared his room, also a chemistry student like Red, was more of a clown, a story teller, excitable and active. He and their last flatmate, René, had played cards until the early morning ever since Cassian arrived. They’d asked him to play with them, but he didn’t know the game.

His money, in the end, was on all three of them being spies.

His flatmates weren’t around, the weather was crisp but clear and they’d planned a hike (at least he thought they had, the accent was still more than an unpleasant hurdle), and he was tempted to go through their stuff and find out who of them it was – the boys weren’t stupid, but they also weren’t trained, and they’d leave some kind of trace for him to find.

But no. Who knew, maybe there were cameras. For now, he wasn’t doing anything suspicious, making his bed, making coffee, taking walks around the university grounds – but if the Cuban exchange student suddenly started rummaging through his roommates' belongings, that would be a different matter.

He wrestled into his coat with some effort – the pullover he had bought was too thick to fit underneath the coat properly, but it was all he could bring himself to wear. His flatmates kept talking about the mild weather and at first, Cassian had thought he’d misunderstood them. There was nothing mild about the frosty gusts of wind that tore at him whenever he ventured out of the apartment - that was only slightly warmer, thanks to their very limited supply of coal. Well, there _was_ coal - but in the cellar, five storeys below.

Cassian hadn’t thought the first thing he’d miss would be _radiators._

He figured he could venture out to the city today, he thought as he made his way down the stairwell;; possibly “get lost” and walk past the girl’s apartment, have a look at the surroundings… he also needed to check where the dead drop was, but probably not today. No student took walks that big, right?

A part of him was tempted to get a look at the MI6 guy as well, the one who was supposed to pick up Cassian’s intel from the dead drop. He could risk it, he was good at countersurveillance and fairly sure he could lose someone in a crowd – but it would be a stupid risk, and besides, wasn’t that the scary part about the Stasi network, that there wasn’t just one, or two? Then again, maybe he _should_ get in touch with him, just so they’d recognise each other. He might need the Brit at some point, and Draven had said to fall back on Kay, even if Cassian doubted he’d allow himself to rely on that. Still. Not today.

But the place where the girl trained, he figured he could walk past that, maybe even take a look. A martial arts studio was just exotic enough to justify it catching Javier’s attention.

The name still felt clunky on his lips. He had never really liked _Javier_ – he should tell people to go with _Javi,_ maybe. That felt marginally less awkward.

He stepped out the door, cursing under his breath when the wind hit his face. He wondered what she was doing today – it was a Friday, the last weekend before the start of term just ahead. Maybe she’d be out of town as well, some kind of trip to get out of this strange, grey city, see the sky and breathe some cleaner air… _Jyn,_ he thought idly, jamming his already cold hands deep into his pockets. Someone didn’t like her given name, either.

In a strange way, he was looking forward to meeting her. That was probably just loneliness, induced by a substantial culture shock, if he wanted to break it down, but he decided he didn’t want to. If anything, it was useful; Javi _should_ be excited to meet new people.

And if he, if _Cassian_ kept something to look forward to for himself – he doubted anyone could blame him.

 

 

> _There's only one direction in the faces that I see  
>  Its upward to the ceiling, where the chamber's said to be  
>  Like the forest fight for sunlight, that takes root in every tree  
>  They are pulled up by the magnet, believing they are free_

 

* * *

 

“I have a favour to ask you,” Krennic said while he poured her a cup of coffee from blindingly white china. Jyn turned around her saucer while he wasn’t looking and was unsurprised to find the two blue swords of the Meissen sigil. They used to have two little vases at home when she was little, locked in a glass cabinet in the living room – she had no idea what had happened to them, but she hadn’t seen them in her father’s flat the last time she’d set foot there.

“Favour?”

“Yes.” Krennic put down the cups and sat down in the chair across her, the picture of ease, and sipped at his cup. “There is a young man who will be attending your courses with Professor Tzschoppe, one of the… well, best and brightest, I suppose, of our socialist brothers and sisters in Cuba.” She always wondered if he rattled off those party slogans with such nonchalance elsewhere, and how he’d got to where he was in the first place if he did. “Naturally, while the Central Committee couldn’t be happier about our great scientific advantages and are happy to share them with our allies for the good of all and so on and so forth,” he gave an impatient wave of the hand, “all these ideals aside, our friends of the State Security remind us that we must be… cautious. The spirit of old Karl and Vlad only counting for so much –“

Jyn tried not to roll her eyes, and couldn’t bring herself to smile at the lazy joke. How funny, that he had the privilege to sit here and sip decent coffee from his dainty, valuable china and make jokes about Big Socialist Idols, and get away with it.

And she got to sit opposite him in her goddamn FDJ blouse, smiling and nodding and knowing a single wrong word could lose her whatever little she had left.

Krennic was still talking, feet up on the coffee table. “ – a foreign object is always a risk and we should like to keep an eye on it. Just to make sure nobody is taking advantage of the privileges the state grants its citizens, you understand.”

 _Too well,_ she thought bitterly. Poor guy, getting to ask himself if he was being spied on by every single person he met here. She knew the feeling.

But why was Krennic telling her about it? What was it to her? Was this way of telling her she’d better not go and hang around this Cuban if she wanted to keep him and his party chums happy? If that was it, he didn’t have to worry. It wasn’t like fraternising with _anybody_ was a habit of hers, least of all the foreign students who’d usually bought their way in as far as she knew. They were either stuck-up rich kids or they didn’t know the rules, and talked about stuff they shouldn’t.

But then again, Krennic wasn’t in the habit of telling her what to do to stay in his good graces, either. She was fairly certain he enjoyed the leverage he had over her, enjoyed knowing he could make her shake in her boots by just pretending she’d annoyed him or disappointed him somehow.

So, why summon her here for coffee and poppy seed cake and tell her about some Cuban kid he wanted to keep under surveillance –

 _Unless…_ A sinking feeling was settling into her stomach. He wouldn’t. Would he? The Stasi didn’t trust her, she was most definitely under surveillance herself…

And she had everything to lose, and they held it in their hands.

“I was thinking…” He paused, put down his cup and threw her another of his genial smiles, and once again, she wondered if he even _knew_ how much she hated him. Maybe he really thought he was giving her a leg up, that he was giving a pretty girl the chance to make her way through the world the way he did – stepping on other people.

Intentional or not, maybe he was giving her a _chance;_ but not a choice.

“More coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

He nodded, sat up in his chair. “I was thinking you might be able to help out with this young man. You’re perfectly placed already, you’re in the same class, and you can tell me about him when you visit me without adding to your schedule.”

“Right,” she said weakly. God, every time she thought it couldn’t _possibly_ get any worse…

“And we know we can trust you, Jyn,” he said, in a voice that was either a passable impression of sincerity or genuine. “You will take your work as an unofficial collaborator of the ministry seriously and help us as well you can.”

Right, no. He was putting on an act, and she _hated_ how easy it was for him – a throwaway line or two and she was frozen in terror. Bastard.

“Of course.”

Again that smile. “Excellent. I have the paperwork just over there.”

 

 

>  
> 
> _Through the door a harvest feast is lit by candlelight_  
>  _Its the bottom of a staircase that spirals out of sight_
> 
> _The carpet crawlers heed their callers_  
>  _We've got to get in to get out_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meißen Porcelain: the first "true porcelain" produced outside of Asia was made in the Albrechtsburg in Meißen near Dresden. They were actually trying to discover the philosopher's stone aka. a substance that would turn other metals into gold, but instead stumbled on a highly profitable enterprise instead. It grew into a factory financed and supervised by the King of Saxony and Poland and became one of the most recognisable porcelain manufactures in the world. In the GDR, it became a VEB (a People-Owned Enterprise) but still sold abroad, thus becoming one of the few truly profitable VEBs in the country. As the pieces aren't mass-produced, they can be very expensive and gain value over time - [with a six-piece coffee set being priced at 1,500 West German Mark or more](https://www.mdr.de/zeitreise/stoebern/damals/artikel93102.html) (which according to my very shabby research would be around 1300€ rn?), so they would be a useful heirloom to keep around even though you probably wouldn't use it in day-to-day life or even at all. [Their sigil are two crossed swords,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meissen_porcelain#Famous_trademark) sometimes with other things around them depending on when the piece was made.
> 
> [Unofficial collaborators (IM, short for Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unofficial_collaborator) were citizens in convenient positions recruited by the Stasi (GDR secret police) to report on their coworkers, friends, family or neighbours. The Stasi kept up a vast network of them to collect information on GDR citizens in every level of society - some historians estimate that in '89 there was one IM for every 89 citizens. Some were paid, others blackmailed, but one of our professors told us once that apparently a lot of people straight-up volunteered because it gave them a feeling of superiority or importance, which... yeah.

**Author's Note:**

> Title "Game Without Frontiers", inspired by Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers"


End file.
